Quote from PORNSTAR69371:
sorry i was a little to bold before, i do believe open office stands a chance of stealing microsoft's thunder in certain aspects, it is free and just as good as office. However there is still ALOT of apllications where you need certain excel based features, and as long as it works this way microsoft will maintain their monopoloy.
I wouldn't say OpenOffice is as good as Office, but it's pretty good, and completely free.
The problem is that when you get a document you get a doc file, or an xls file. You are expected to have Office, and some other applications (like OpenOffice) don't always work, because of the special features you mentioned (OpenOffice does a good job though). And it's not only Office. There are many important applications that need Windows to run, like Autocad. Without going too far, look at how many trading applications run on Windows. And, again, the driver problem. Windows has a lot of users, and therefore a lot of attention. It's pretty normal.
Yet, 10 years ago it wasn't normal to have a Linux server, and now it is. Apache is crushing IIS, and companies are starting to sell computers with Linux, or to support Linux. Just look at this thread to have an idea of how people would like to change. Hell, Microsoft is even working with Novell now.
It's a slow trend, but it's a trend. It can't change from one day to the other, but it is slowly changing. And, considering all the companies that want to kill Microsoft, and that a lot of software is open and developed for free, I don't see how it can be stopped.
